35053668-Empire-of-the-Soul-Paul-William-Roberts

EMPIRE OF THE SOUL
weary as its city, and indeed its country. Jamsetji Tata’s defiant
monument had survived to see the time when all of India –
independent India – had become one vast, teeming symbol of
triumphant defiance. The grand old building’s symbolic function
was no longer relevant.
Even back in 1940, the Taj’s managing director, a Mr Sabavala,
wrote, ‘The present building is nearing its life’s end.’ Unfortunately,
it was Mr Sabavala whose life’s end turned out to be nearer. But the
Tata family were determined to modernise according to the needs
of the twentieth-century tourist and traveller. They contemplated
constructing a New Taj, but they were equally determined to
preserve their ancestor’s magnificent gift to an inchoate nation.
S. K. Kooka, the scholar and author who joined the House of
Tatas in 1938, after an education at Oxford, is a man in the Jamsetji
mould. Out of his work in the former aviation department of Tata
Sons, he created the commercial department of Air India – a
continuing example of this family’s contributions to shaping
modern India. Kooka recalls a conversation he once had with Curt
Strand of Hilton International, around the time construction of the
New Taj was being considered:
I mentioned . . . that Tatas were determined to keep the old Taj
intact, with the innards reworked where necessary, because the
structural engineers had sworn that the steel girders imported
from England by Jamsetji Tata in 1900 would last until further
notice. Curt Strand’s reply was: ‘Fine, as long as the termites
keep holding hands.’
As Kooka observed after that, ‘Bombay, alas, shows every sign of a
city whose termites will soon stop holding hands.’ But Jamsetji
bought only the best: the old Taj still stands, alongside the new
tower, the whole complex more elegant than ever, the British steel
girders having yet to give their notice. From the outside, the hotel
looks like an architectural anomaly – a modern high-rise grafted
onto a nineteenth-century Indo-Bavarian castle – while its interior
demonstrates the Tata passion for tradition blended with the
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